Soundcheck: Pledge Allegiance

Are you in a band? If so, Jesse Elliott would like to play with you. As the mastermind behind Americana-influenced, D.C.-based rock quintet These United States, Elliott has quickly forged a reputation as being a collaborative freak, seemingly asking the whole world to make music with him. Take 2008, for instance, a year in which Elliott, working with singer-songwriter Paleo and with the help of thirty other musicians, released electro-indie record “A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate of the Garden of Eden,” then quickly turned around, formed a band in D.C. and put out an alt-country record with “Crimes.” In between those records—in a move that conjured up the grassroots spirit of the band’s moniker—Elliott and company took to the road, visiting thirty-three cities and recruiting local bands to learn their songs and play with them at each stop. Basically, if you’ve got a guitar, a tambourine, a musical jug or whatever, you and Jesse should jam.

With an army of collaborators, These United States naturally blends a plethora of different perspectives. “A Picture of Three of Us…”, for example, sounds like a less-synthetic Postal Service record with narration by M. Ward, psychedelic contributions from Beck and bedroom-pop production. Indeed, it seems the project is exclusively defined by a crazy mishmash of styles. But now, Elliott has settled down and committed to four other comrades—so how’s he going to scratch the collaboration itch?

“I think a lot of [the desire to collaborate] is satisfied with our live shows, and just kind of being on the road, you get to do a lot of that naturally,” Elliott says. “You’re playing a lot of different shows with a lot of different people, it’s pretty common to have somebody jump up on your songs or jumping up on other people’s songs. …Part of the fun of music is that common language thing, seeing what new people bring to your ideas, and vice versa.”

Elliott’s views on music have a childlike innocence: he loves artists that “take something inside of them that is important and share it in a way that doesn’t hold back and hopes that somebody else connects with it and finds meaning in it, to make people happy.” Where did he get such positive, idealistic beliefs? Turns out it was Dr. Teeth, purple top-hat-wearing Muppet bandleader of The Electric Mayhem, and his creator, Jim Henson.

“I think my general outlook on life, and love of music and art, is very much derived from the kind of stuff he did,” Elliott says. “I saw the Muppet Movie again for the first time in ten years, and I was like, ‘Damn, this is sort of everything I believe in, this must have just crept into my brain when I was 6 years old and just stayed there.’” (Andy Seifert)